Monday, January 16, 2017

Why Would Abercrombie & Fitch Pay Someone NOT to Wear Its Apparel?

When we think about social influence, we typically think about how and why people tend to feel pressures to conform to the behavior of their peers, colleagues, or teammates. We act a certain way, or make certain decisions, because others have made similar choices or taken similar actions. However, at times, social influence works in the opposite way. We do not want to be like certain people. Therefore, if they act a certain way, we most certainly do not want to behave in a similar fashion. 

Jonah Berger, author of Invisible Influence: The Hidden Forces That Shape Behavior, relates a story about this type of repellent effect of social influence in an episode of the Hidden Brain podcast.   Berger tells a story from the reality show, Jersey Shore, believe it or not!  He explains that Abercrombie & Fitch once paid Mike "The Situation" Sorrentino NOT to wear its apparel.   Similarly, a Gucci competitor sent Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi one of Gucci's handbags.  Why would that Gucci rival do that?  They knew that many luxury handbag customers would be turned off by the fact that Snooki was carrying around a Gucci handbag.  That would hurt the Gucci brand image, and perhaps help the rival's position in the market.   

Berger explained ,"It turns out influence is very much like a magnet...but it just as well repels us.  And the idea here is, well, if Mike 'The Situation' is wearing Abercrombie & Fitch, maybe other people aren't going to want to wear it anymore. Or if Snooki is hanging on to a Gucci handbag, maybe that will help their competitors because no one will want to wear Gucci anymore. So we need to understand how social influence attracts, but also how it repels."

Berger once conducted a study with Stanford's Chip Heath to demonstrate the power of this repellent effect.  Berger and Heath distributed Livestrong wristbands to residents of a particular dorm on the Stanford campus.  One week later, they distributed the wristbands to a nearby residence hall known on the campus as the "geeky" dorm.   The researchers tracked continued usage of the wristbands.  They found a 32% drop in wristband usage by the first group.  They had witnessed the "geeks" wearing the Livestrong wristbands, and a sizeable number of them had abandoned wearing them as a result!  

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